{"id":196,"date":"2012-10-12T16:12:31","date_gmt":"2012-10-12T20:12:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blanketfortgames.com\/wp\/?p=196"},"modified":"2012-10-12T16:12:32","modified_gmt":"2012-10-12T20:12:32","slug":"inspiration-not-all-that-inspiring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blanketfortgames.com\/wp\/?p=196","title":{"rendered":"Inspiration not all that inspiring&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Inspiration, the game I had hoped would prove a worthy successor to Influence, is dead.  It is definitely deceased.  It is not resting, stunned, or pining for the fjords.<\/p>\n<p>What happened was this:  I had the idea at MineCon to make a thematic prequel to Influence, in which one would experience the formation of a great idea.  I put together a demo showing off the mechanics I had in mind to illustrate this process in January of this year.  The mechanics seemed fun, and all that was left was to design some compelling levels.  Unfortunately, that&#8217;s where the wheels came off.  It would be hubris to assume that nobody could successfully design fun levels out of the mechanics I put together, but I certainly can&#8217;t.  I can be certain because I tried quite a few times, and all the levels were either boring of frustrating.  It was impossible to hit the fun-and-challenging sweet spot.<\/p>\n<p>Refining design by throwing out what doesn&#8217;t work is a key principle at Blanket Fort Games, and in this case, what doesn&#8217;t work is Inspiration.  I have posted <a href=\"http:\/\/www.blanketfortgames.com\/inspiration\/index.html\">here<\/a> the final demo, showing that my best shot at a complex level (the third in the posted demo), despite being intricate and requiring thought, isn&#8217;t fun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Inspiration, the game I had hoped would prove a worthy successor to Influence, is dead. It is definitely deceased. It is not resting, stunned, or pining for the fjords. What happened was this: I had the idea at MineCon to make a thematic prequel to Influence, in which one would experience the formation of a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blanketfortgames.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blanketfortgames.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blanketfortgames.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blanketfortgames.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blanketfortgames.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.blanketfortgames.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blanketfortgames.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blanketfortgames.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blanketfortgames.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}